WORLD famous internationals playing Premiership football in the state-of-the-art surroundings of the Reebok Stadium is a testimony to how Bolton Wanderers have kept pace - often against the odds - with the progress of the game in the course of their 125-year history.

One of football's most famous old clubs, established in 1877 and being one of the 12 founder members of the Football League a decade later, Wanderers have been in the vanguard as the game has changed, developed and progressed down the years.

Like most professional sporting organisations they have had their ups and downs and, for various reasons, the graph of success over a decade and a quarter plots a roller-coaster existence.

But down the years, Wanderer' anniversaries have been timed to perfection.

Their centenary in 1977 coincided with with their promotion to top flight football as champions of the old Second Division and leaving Burnden Park for the Reebok in 1997 was all the more poignant for coinciding with their promotion as runaway, record-breaking champions, back to the Premiership.

Successive generations have delighted in seeing Wanderers involved when football has been the centre of attention at home and abroad - their FA Cup triumph of 1923 when they became the first Wembley winners and their involvement in the celebrated Matthews Final of 1953 and, of course, their 1958 success when, beating the Munich-ravaged Manchester United team, they were unfortunate to be cast as the most unpopular FA Cup-winning teams of all time.

For the record, only a handful of clubs in the world can match their longevity. They are one of only a handful to have reached the 125-year milestone but there is more to the history of Bolton Wanderers than landmark anniversaries.

There have been tears as well as triumphs. The Burnden Park disaster of 1946, when 33 people died after a barrier collapsed at the packed Embankment end, was the worst sporting tragedy England had ever witnessed.

That same generation of supporters saw the club's respected captain, Harry Goslin, march his team-mates to the Drill Hall in Silverwell Street to sign up for the 53rd Field Regiment of the Bolton Artillery - volunteering rather than waiting to be called up to fight for their country. Goslin, sadly, did not return - killed in action in December 1943 - the only member of that band of patriots who did not return from the conflict.

The story of the Wartime Wanderers, movingly told in the book by Tim Purcell and Mike Gething, and the accounts of the disaster have long been confined to the history books, leaving post-war supporters with only the highs and lows of the team's performances to exercise their emotions.

The sporting heroes: Nat Lofthouse and his talented team-mates of the Fifties; Freddie Hill, Francis Lee and Wyn Davies from the Sixties; Frank Worthington and co from the Seventies; Andy Walker and John McGinlay in the Nineties and bang up to date ... the likes of Youri Djorkaeff, a member of the all-conquering French World Cup and European Championship winning squad, and Jay-Jay Okocha, captain of the Nigerian international side, the Super Eagles.

Membership of the Premiership - the richest and most glamorous domestic league in the world - for four of the last eight seasons has put Bolton Wanderers back among the elite.

But there have been times in the not-too-distant past when the club's very existence was in jeopardy. Having struggled to keep pace with the big city clubs after the maximum wage revolution of the early-60s, the financial situation had slumped to such a perilous state in the early-80s that club bosses needed to launch a Lifeline appeal to stay in business.

They still find it difficult to compete with the super-rich but Wanderers remain the focal point of the town's sporting life, as they always have over the past 125 years.